Indiana Daily Student
8
OPINION
Friday, March 10, 2017 idsnews.com
REYNOLDS WRAP UP
Editors Dylan Moore and Zack Chambers opinion@idsnews.com
EDITORIAL BOARD
We need more community gardens Volunteers can begin Thursday helping at the IU Campus Garden initiative for the spring 2017 season. Located at The Hilltop Gardens on 10th Street, students and volunteers can work within the IU Office of Sustainability’s edible gardening plot to provide educational opportunities to the Bloomington community and produce for the Indiana Memorial Union. This amazing opportunity not only helps the community we live in but stresses the importance and benefits of community gardening and food system sustainability in general — something most people do not know enough about. To many people, it’s common knowledge that energy production and factories negatively affect the environment. What is less universally understood is that the agriculture and factory farming industry represents one of the largest threats to the environment as well. A study by the World Resources Institute found that the agricultural sector creates 14 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions: the most significant driver of observed climate change. To put this into perspective, the agricultural perspective produces more emissions than the entire transportation sector, which contributes 13.5 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions. What makes this statistic alarming is that this is the most conservative estimation, and that our current food system will become increasingly unsustainable. Under our current food production system, the average meal will travel more than 1,500 miles from a factory farm and take seven to 14 days to get to your table. This combined with the United States’ meatdriven dietary preferences, which result in the most
Sam Reynolds is a sophomore in business and English.
environmental damage, and a growing global population means environmental damage from farming has no end in sight. We need a change to our current food production systems. This is where community gardens, and The Hilltop Gardens specifically, can help. First and foremost, community gardens help solve the problem of our unsustainable food system by simply educating more people that the problem exists. For anything to change, people must know that the problem exists in the first place. The Hilltop Gardens succeeds at this goal by providing educational resources for youth, IU students and the Bloomington community. With workshops like “Getting started with backyard chickens,” The Hilltop Gardens also provides practical skills that help individuals promote sustainability. Other than education, the Office of Sustainability’s edible gardening space strives to make material change one step at a time. By providing fresh, local produce to the IMU, this garden works to cut down on the 1,500 miles the average meal travels before reaching the end consumer and then forgoes a week-long shipment. Locally produced food contains more nutrients, thus making Bloomington a healthier place. Community gardens are crucial to making change to our current unsustainable food sourcing practices. I urge all readers to keep in mind the benefits of locally sourced food, and to either volunteer at the Hilltop Community Gardens, or any other garden in your community. sareynol@umail.iu.edu
COFFEE CHRONICLES
Other developed nations must pull their weight If the United States does something to intervene in world affairs it is both wrong and right. It will be labeled the world’s overbearing policeman and also the greatest superpower on earth. It’s impossible for the U.S. to be all things to all people and this has caused many Americans to wonder why other countries, especially developed nations like many of our allies, cannot pick up some of the slack. These beliefs played well with President Trump’s “America First” outlook, but many decried his pro-U.S. rhetoric as too nationalistic. While I do not support many of the protectionist policies Trump would like to enact, I do think he is right for calling attention to the gap between the U.S.‘s global efforts and the efforts of its allies. One of the prime examples of this is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After Trump took office, he caused an uproar by claiming NATO was unfair to Americans because they paid more than their fair share in exchange for allied support. However, judging by indirect funding of NATO, the U.S. does spend the most by funding 22 percent of NATO’s budget. Even President Obama said European allies often did not contribute their fair share to these alliances. To put this into perspective, NATO member nations are asked to allocate two-percent of their GDP to fund the alliance. The U.S. annually gives money equal to 3.61 percent of its GDP to NATO, while countries like France, Germany and Italy all fail to reach the two-percent goal. This, coupled with the
Neeta Patwari is a junior in biology.
fact that the U.S. has the highest GDP in the world, means that many European nations are disproportionately benefiting from U.S. contributions. It’s easy to look at European nations and criticize U.S. social programs. This is a contentious subject, but one of the reasons is the U.S. provides the funding for research that benefits the whole world, and it’s not just military. Let’s take a look at the pharmaceutical industry. It is constantly slammed, sometimes rightly, about how the prices of drugs in the U.S. are too high when compared to nations like Canada. However, this fails to account for the fact that the U.S. subsidized drug development and research that is then used by the rest of the world. When American consumers buy pharmaceuticals, their purchases subsidize the research for the international community. Overall in 2013, the U.S. paid for 46 percent of biopharmaceutical research. I think it is easy for all of us to look across the Atlantic and see that Europeans have some social programs that the U.S. does not. However, this is only because the U.S. pays for things that allow these countries to forgo these parts of their budget. American allies should be required to contribute more to our alliances, and the U.S. should stop subsidizing the military and pharmaceuticals for the rest of the world. Maybe then we can support domestic social programs instead. npatwari@umail.iu.edu
ILLUSTRATION BY KATIE MEIER | IDS
Exploring private space travel Government programs aren’t the only ones reaching for the stars So far it’s been an eventful year for both NASA and SpaceX, the private space exploration company founded by Elon Musk. With the recent planetary discoveries, the potential change in the Hubble constant, and now SpaceX’s announcement of private space travel, there’s a lot to look forward to. SpaceX is promoting privately funded space travel, and we think this may be our best bet to literally reach the stars. Space is expensive. Therefore, we cannot rely on just the government to get our astronauts or plain space lovers into the cosmos. By funding these programs privately, we will get more work done. When SpaceX announced its plan to send two people on a moon tour, the Indiana Daily Student asked professor Constantine
Deliyannis what he thought about these plans. Deliyannis teaches in the astronomy and physics department at IU. Deliyannis said he loved that NASA and SpaceX were working together to get more work done than they would accomplish separately. He stressed the importance of recognizing our accomplishments so far and putting into perspective what we will need to do for the future. It’s expensive to study space, and it’s even more expensive to travel and investigate space. Because of this, SpaceX felt it was more important to fund space exploration privately rather than publicly. The government has a capped budget for what it can give to space exploration. Right now, the government is giving NASA $19 billion of the $3.73
trillion budget for the fiscal year of 2017. Out of this budget, a projected $8 billion is geared toward human exploration. While this may seem like a large number, only $3 billion of that is budgeted for actual exploration. The other $5 billion is budgeted for the research that goes into getting people into space. Of course, that is still a large sum of money. The two tourists traveling with SpaceX will pay at least $35 million for a ticket, which was the most recent price to send astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA is paying $80 million per astronaut for rover missions on the moon. Private spaceflight will one day become its own industry because of the steps SpaceX is taking. In our lifetime, we may see a new era of the space race.
Blue Origin is a private spaceflight company owned by Jeff Bezos. It announced that it too will be supporting private spaceflights. The rocket design and the astronaut who will be partaking in these private spaceflights were revealed earlier this month. This brewing competition is not only exciting, but it is producing more technology and information about space travel. Rather than pitting countries against each other in a race to space, we are seeing privately funded companies do the exact same thing. This time around, though, if one of them fails, it is not at the expense of the government or the people of the country. One day humans will see commercial space tourism. Private space companies are helping us get there.
KARL’S KORNER
A world without women would be absolutely awful On International Women’s Day, social media users across the globe advocated that every day be women’s day. There’s great sentiment behind that idea but it seems like a rather abstract and difficult idea to follow through on. Recognition lies at the heart of this undertaking. We need to acknowledge the role of women in our everyday lives. Maybe the easiest way to do so is to imagine a world in which women didn’t exist. Conjure up this make-believe world in your mind. Immediately, you’ll realize a stark difference in this fictional landscape — there are no people. This factor is easily overlooked because most of us don’t wake up every morning reminiscing the good old days when we lived inside our moms for 9 months. Aside from the obvious absence of human beings, the world would be missing a lot of key inventions as well. Let’s begin with something easy – the Toll House tubs of cookie dough you buy at the grocery store. There’s virtually no opposition to the gooey
insides of a warm chocolate chip cookie. You can thank Ruth Graves Wakefield, who sold her cookie recipe to Andrew Nestle and received a lifetime supply of Nestle chocolate. Talk about a baller move. Sadly, in a world without women, you’d have to say goodbye to beer as well, even though it’s almost exclusively marketed towards men. According to a study conducted by Jane Peyton, the earliest brewing practices in Mesopotamia and Sumeria show women were the only ones allowed to brew the drink or run any taverns. Whether it’s canned or bottled, warm or cold, in a glass or a funnel, men have women to thank for their choice beverage. Additionally, this world would be void of dishwashers, and you’d be forced to wash your dishes by hand, or more likely let them pile up in your sink until they’ve reached the ceiling. Josephine Cochrane created the first reliable handpowered dishwasher because she didn’t like doing the dishes. Neither do I. Smart lady. A few other household
appliances made by the hands of women include disposable diapers, ironing boards and paper bags. Forget about your neatly packed sack lunches and crisply ironed button-downs because in a world without women, these practical objects wouldn’t be accessible. Moving on to more serious and perhaps life-saving inventions, let’s say you live on the fifth floor of an IU tenement building and your moronic next-door neighbor caught their frozen pizza on fire. In a world without women, you’d probably die because Anna Connelly invented the fire escape. Now, let’s take a look at death scenarios that could occur in water. We all saw “The Titanic.” Rose gets toted away with 704 lucky survivors to New York City with no problem. Without Maria Beasley, who invented the life raft in 1884, Rose would have died alongside Jack on that fated wooden door, which by the way totally could have held them both. If you were to need surgery in a world without
Jessica Karl is a senior in English.
women, that’s too bad because Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie investigated radioactivity, discovered the elements polonium and radium and was crucial for developing surgical X-rays. On rainy days in a world without women, you’d be more likely to stay at home, because Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper. If you were thinking about passing the time on said rainy day by playing Monopoly, you couldn’t — Elizabeth Magie created the precursor to Monopoly, “The Landlord’s Game.” As you can see, a world without women absolutely sucks. No chocolate chip cookies. No fire escapes. No windshield wipers. Thankfully, this made-up world is not reality. The next time you load up the dishwasher or get an Xray, let a woman in your life know how much you appreciate her, tampons and all. After all, she did invent beer. jlkarl@umail.iu.edu
A NOTE FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD The Editorial Board is made up of the Opinion section editors and columnists. Each editorial topic is selected and discussed by the Board until we reach a consensus, and a member of the board volunteers to write the article. The opinions expressed by the Editorial Board do not necessarily represent the opinions of the IDS news staff, student body, faculty or staff members or the Board of Trustees. Spring 2017 Editorial Board: Dylan Moore, Zack Chambers, Kaitlynn Milvert, Miranda Garbaciak, Becca Dague, Neeta Patwari, Anna Groover, Maddy Klein, Emma Getz, Colin Dombrowski, Jessica Karl, Steven Reinoehl, Austin VanScoik, Julia Bourkland, Kathryn (Katie) Meier, Lucas Robinson, Sam Reynolds, Mercer Suppiger, Brian Gamache, Justin Sexton
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